20110514
reuters

Uganda's opposition leader who has led protests over rising prices said the action would spread and even soldiers who have battled demonstrators may stop doing so if President Yoweri Museveni fails to offer concessions.

Kizza Besigye has become the face of the often violent "walk to work" protests that twice a week urge people to leave their cars at home to highlight soaring fuel and food prices they say are suffocating Uganda's poorest.

"You saw the women on the streets, the lawyers said they were putting down their tools," Besigye told Reuters in an interview, in reference to allied marches and protests by womens' groups and lawyers.

"I'm sure we are going to see more," he said. "The teachers will say they will not go to the classroom, the doctors and medical workers will say, 'no this is not on' so the legitimacy will increasingly be withdrawn by the people and the regime has no control over that."

Museveni has been in power for 25 years and is respected internationally for bringing economic and political stability and for intervening in regional hotspots such as Somalia. But critics say he marries that with domestic repression.

Besigye, a former army colonel, said the final source of government power -- the military -- would fail to back it if Museveni did not offer "genuine negotiations" on the rising prices and other reforms.

"The soldiers will ask themselves a few questions - whether they should go ahead and do the bidding of the actual beneficiaries of the regime while they themselves are suffering, while they are being asked to brutalise their neighbours, their relatives," he said.

Besigye, 55, was Museveni's field doctor during his days as a bush rebel, and has now lost three elections against his former friend, including the latest poll in February, which the opposition said was rigged.